Customer Reviews

Blow Out (Widescreen/Full Screen)

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Blow Out
Directed by Brian De Palma
Starring John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow and Dennis Franz

Criterion | 1981 | 108 min | Rated R | Released Apr 26, 2011

Video:
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.40:1

Audio:
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0

Subtitles:
English SDH

Disc:
Single 50GB Blu-ray Disc

Jack Terry (Travolta) is a sound-effects man who works on B-movies for a Philadelphia-based studio. One night, he decides to go out to record some new effects. He captures the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, a frog croaking, an owl hooting and a couple's conversation. They mention that someone is watching them from a nearby bridge.

Jack inadvertently records a car accident and a gunshot heard before it veers off the road into a creek. He runs over and leaps into the water, pulling a woman from the car, but too late to save the man she is with. The woman, Sally (Allen), survives the accident with no apparent injuries. The dead man turns out to be Governor McRyan, a potential presidential candidate.

The police write the crash off as an accident, but Jack knows what he heard and reconstructs the scene in his mind by listening to his recording. We find out that someone caught the crash on film and sold it to various publications. Jack matches the images to the sounds and is certain the crash was caused by a bullet hitting a tire. None of the authorities seem interested so he seeks Sally's help to prove his theory.

De Palma builds suspense throughout and a plot to discredit the Governor is gradually revealed. Sally was working for Manny (Franz), a private eye, and they have a history of using her to ruin people's public images with the help of a henchman known as Burke (Lithgow). Burke has an agenda of his own and exceeds his authority.

Nobody wants to admit that McRyan had a woman in the car and a full cover-up is set in motion. Burke is out to tie up any loose ends and silence the potential threat from Jack and Sally.

De Palma brings to mind Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up as well as a number of Alfred Hitchcock's movies. He confirms in the special features that the film was inspired by the JFK shooting and subsequent events.

The resulting mix is an intriguing mystery, filled with suspense and a little action. Will Jack be able to prove his theory and make it public, or will it be buried? The final shot is a memorable one and the film doesn't have a traditional Hollywood ending. It works for me.

Video Quality 4/5
It's difficult to grade Criterion's newly-restored presentation because the quality varies. In brightly-lit scenes, detail is exceptional considering the age of the film. Some of the scenes are dark and filled with heavy grain. I didn't notice any dirt or debris, but did see vertical lines on the screen a couple of times. Overall, I was pleased. Criterion does everything possible with its transfers and didn't let me down here.

Sound Quality 5/5
Sound understandably plays an important part in the film and the DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track delivers. Some scenes are made up of a multitude of different sounds, presumably to draw our attention to what we are hearing. It's particularly evident when Jack is recording his sound-effects tape and captures the car's crash. Dialogue is clear throughout and it's hard to imagine a better quality track than this one.

Special Features 5/5

A 58-minute interview with De Palma conducted by Noah Baumback (1080p). De Palma talks about many technical aspects of the film including the split diopter and Steadicam, as well as some of the difficulties faced during filming. He also mentions Alfred Hitchcock and some of the things that influenced the story.

De Palma's 1967 film, Murder a la Mod, appears here in full (81 minutes, 1080p).

Interview with Nancy Allen (26 minutes, 1080p).

Interview with Garrett Brown, inventor of the Steadicam (16 minutes, 1080p).

Louis Goldman photographs showing stills from Blow Out.

Trailer (2 minutes, 1080p)

34-page booklet

Criterion's recent release does justice to an important film and is thoroughly worth the upgrade to Blu-ray. You're actually getting two De Palma films in this package and Blow Out is one of Travolta's best films. I wonder how influential his performance here was in convincing Quentin Tarantino (a huge De Palma fan) to cast him in Pulp Fiction?

Overall score 4.5/5

Cet excellent suspense de Brian de Palma vaut le détour si vous ne l`avez pas encore vu.John Travolta est parfait dans le role d`un preneur de son témoin d`un accident un soir.Le reste je vous laisse le découvrir.Intense!

A rare and hard to find movie. I'm so greatful that it's still available. Service was fantastic, couldn't ask for anything better.

Having heard before hand, that Brian DePalma's "Blow Out" was like a tribute to Antonioni's "Blow Up", i was definately intreagued. "Blow Up" is one of the greatest art films I've ever seen, and knowing that tributes are never as good as the original, i knew not to expect too much.

Basically, "Blow Out" involves a sound man (Travolta) recording sounds in a park at night, when a speeding car has what seems to be a blow out, crashes through a fence and into a lake. Travolta is able to rescue the woman, but the man behind the wheel was dead before he could be helped. Upon listening to the tape he'd made that night, Travolta recovers what he believes to be two sounds. Naturally, he can't help but get involved, and try to solve the case.

I Enjoyed Blow Out for the obvious reasons; good acting, complex script, lots of well-drawn suspense. And, if you've never seen or liked Antonioni's "Blow Up", the review can end here for you. You'll probably enjoy this version. Despite my complaints in the next paragraph, i really liked this movie.

However having seen and enjoyed "Blow Up", it looked to me like Brian De Palma did what everyone was tempted to do, but that no one should have done. Made "Blow Up" a Hollywood movie. "Blow Up" actually has a lot a great suspense and intreague, but the end is sure do disappoint those who need a clean-cut ending, which is to say, most theatre goers. Basically, they smushed the plot of "Blow Up" down about 30 minutes, added some more murders and people skulking around shadowy rooms, and then gave it a conclusive ending.

Needless to say, it's frusterating to see a great piece of art turned into a decent Hollywood movie. But hey, if you like a good suspense thriller, this works.

I saw «Blow Out» for the first time when I was 8. Couldn't forget it.
I saw «Blow Up» for the first time when I was 10. Couldn't forget it.
I saw «The Conversation» for the first time when I was 25. Couldn't forget it.

The reason these movies stay in your mind is simple. See the three of them and you'll understand.

'Blow Out' is one of my favourite De Palma films, right after 'Dressed To Kill'. John travolta and Nancy Allen are perfect. I adore these two actors and there's something alluring about these two characters they play. De Palma's use of direction he takes the film is superb and the musical score is astounding. A must see for DePalma fans.
By Justine Ryan

Brian De Palma rips off Michaelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation and comes up with a decent thriller about a film sound engineer (John Travolta) who records an automobile accident and becomes involved in a coverup when it turns out the driver was about to be elected President of the United States.

Jack Terry (Travolta) is on a city bridge recording ambient sounds for his latest schlock film's soundtrack when he hears a blow out and sees a car go off the road and into the lake. He dives in to find a woman, Sally (Nancy Allen), still alive in the car. He rescues her and takes her to the emergency room, where he finds out that the candidate was driving the car--and Sally isn't his wife. The police proceed to get Jack to "forget" what he saw.

Later, going over his tapes, Jack becomes convinced he heard a sound *before* the blow out--a gunshot. If there was a gun, then this was no accident.

After Carrie and Dressed to Kill, Blow Out continues Brian DePalma's reign as king of the Hitchcockian thriller/rip-off. Although style often triumphs over substance, often the style comments on the substance. His trademark split-screen (which specifically influenced Run Lola Run's Tom Tykwer) is used effectively to present two simultaneous sets of action that would otherwise be unknown. DePalma has also used this method of technical storytelling in Phantom of the Paradise and Sisters.

The acting is solid, as well, with Nancy Allen (then Mrs. DePalma) as the prototypical love interest (or is she?) and an early John Lithgow playing Burke, a homicidal maniac hired to take out Sally (as he takes out seemingly every woman who resembles her). DePalma would use Lithgow to greater effect in Raising Cain, and here he shows the promise of that later film.

SPOILER BEGINS

I must comment on the ending and say that it is one of the most heartbreaking I have seen, and yet works entirely in the context of the film. It really could not have ended any other way, and I laud DePalma for avoiding the typical Hollywood happy ending.

SPOILER ENDS
(and so does this review)

What Brian De Palma and Vilmos Zsigmond did with the Panavision landscape in this film was incredibly innovative and years ahead of its time. One might think that many of the shots in this film were computer generated. The story is equally impressive and that's the dichotomy about this whole film. Style seems to minimize the substance of the story. The best sequence in the film is when John Travolta splices together the frames of the car and matches them up with the recording he made of the blow out. The rest of the film has a hallucinatory effect to it, which is either good or bad depending on how you perceive the story. Is it a thriller or an allegory or both?

While it may be deriative of other films (Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW and even De Palma's own BODY DOUBLE and DRESSED TO KILL), this still stands as one of his best.

A movie sound man (John Travolta in one of his best performances), inadvertantly records an accident while recording effects for a new film-- one that kills the governor. He saves the other passenger, a hooker (Nancy Allen in another great performance that reminds one of her hooker character in DRESSED TO KILL) who tries to help him solve the case.

Meanwhile, a killer is on the loose, killing off Nancy Allen look-alikes in a most brutal fashion-- strangling them, and then stabbing a picture of the liberty bell on their stomachs. Travolta and Allen try to put the pieces of the puzzle together by putting together a film of the accident, which is purposefully erased to make it look like Travolta is full of crap.

The killer calls Allen to meet her at a subway so she can give him the tapes of the accident, disgusing himself as a TV reporter. Travolta figures out a way to rig a microphone onto Allen so he can hear everything they are saying from his car. When he hears the guys voice, he knows it is not that reporter, and he races to find them before it is too late...

In some ways, this is a very complex, disturbing, suspenseful, and often confusing thriller. But that's that way it was meant to be. And you'll see that, at the end, the pieces of the puzzle all really do fit together (despite a very sad ending, you'll figure it out, through the tears).

MGM does a great job on the presentation on BLOW OUT, giving you a choice of widescreen or fullscreen on a two sided disc. Unfortunately, the only extra is the theatrical trailer, and that is a major disappointment on the issue of the DVD. Both CARRIE and DRESSED TO KILL got documentaries and tons of extras, and one wonders why BLOW OUT couldn't have, but what you have to realize is this: those two films were special editions, while BLOW OUT is not. It was the same thing with the original CARRIE DVD-- the only extra was a trailer-- until they released it in a special edition version.

Frankly, I think all of De Palma's films are worth owning on DVD. These are his horror titles I recommend that are available on DVD: SISTERS, PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, OBSESSION, CARRIE, THE FURY, DRESSED TO KILL, BLOW OUT, BODY DOUBLE, and RAISING CAIN.

Yeah, yeah-- more extras would have been nice, but this DVD DOES give you a sharp, sparkling print of a great Brian De Palma movie, one of his best, in fact. So, at this price, why complain? Just turn down the lights and enjoy it.